Anyone who watches and follows the NBA knows the sky-high salaries being paid to the Association’s superstars. Yet – as most of us know – that’s not the only place the big money comes from. It’s also (a lot!) about the endorsement deals players from just about all pro sports make to promote apparel and shoes. Oh, the shoes!
Back when our man Shaq was in the middle of his oversized NBA career, the endorsement offers pretty much poured in like a waterfall. And like most well-known superstars, the biggest of the big money was in the shoe deals.
Probably the biggest athletic shoe company at the time was Nike. Probably still is. So not surprisingly, the Oregon-based company reached out to O’Neal for a possible endorsement deal. In fact, Nike had its corporate eyes on Shaq back in his college days at LSU.
Yet when Shaq left college and was drafted number one by the Orlando Magic, the big man turned down the big deal with Nike and instead signed with the less well-known Reebok.
In a recent episode of the sports podcast “Complex”, O’Neal talked to host Joe La Puma about the decision to go with Reebok and turn down Nike.
Shaq: “When I got drafted, they gave me the opportunity to have my own shoe — Reebok. Nike was interested, but they didn’t want me to have my own shoe. I knew at the time that I wasn’t interested in being another guy on the shelf,” he explained.
“I wanted to have my own line, my own shoe. I wanted to come out with a bang. You know, my motto was making people remember my name. And instead of proving myself first, I wanted to have my name out there first to improve myself later.”
In fact, there’s this mythic story that Shaq had pretty much made up his mind about the Reebok deal even before he met with Nike officials. Seems the young soon-to-be superstar says he attended the meeting wearing some very special footwear, wearing Reebok shoes to the meeting!
O’Neal said his plan was to use the meeting with Nike as leverage to receive more money on his endorsement deal with Rebook. Rebook ended up giving him an extra million dollars after the Nike meeting. Smart!
Still, O’Neal’s deal with Rebook eventually came to an end. Shaq says he wanted to change the prices of his shoes to make them more affordable for customers — a lady literally complained and asked him to make them more affordable and he took the comment to heart. He would go on to create his own signature line of shoes, the Dunkman.
As for the Dunkman shoes, they have quite an interesting history, too. If you’ve ever seen them, the Dunkman shoes look a bit like shoes from Nike and their Air Jordan lineup. O’Neal revealed that Nike actually owned the brand at one point and that’s why the looks were similar.
On the podcast and video, O’Neal denied copying any Nike product. “A lot of people say ‘he’s copying’ — I didn’t design that. They designed that, they approved it, they let it go and it got to be hot. Nike owned the Shaq brand at one time but they didn’t pay it any attention, they didn’t want anything to do with it and so they gave it back to me and I grew it to 600 million pairs sold since then.”
Always the keen businessman! And always a cool, generous guy. During his appearance on the Complex show, Shaq ended up buying a boatload of Reebok and Adidas shoes for kids from a Boys & Girls Club in Atlanta. He’d invited them to visit him for the show recording. The big man spent almost a grand for kids shoes along with accessories. Nice!
Here’s the full interview, if you want to see it: